Pinning its hopes on the sole support of the US, Israel risks a collapse if it is ever withdrawn - much like apartheid-era South Africa, prominent scholar Professor Noam Chomsky warns. ­He recalls how South Africans felt safe to ignore a UN embargo and corporations pulling out of their country throughout the 1980s, as long as the Reagan administration continued to support them. As soon as the US withdrew its support, the apartheid regime collapsed.

"For 35 years, the US and Israel have been rejecting a political settlement that is supported virtually by the entire world. A couple of months ago, there was a meeting of the oligarchs -- people who pretty much run the economy [of Israel]," Chomsky says, "and they warned the government that it better accept something like this resolution, because otherwise, Israel will be, as they put it, South Africanized: even more isolated, with boycotts, refusal to load ships, and their economy will collapse."